Shoreline Community College officials currently are working to hire a new traffic engineer and facilitator to help redesign a key intersection for the college and better integrate the community with the process.
LMN Architects, the company overseeing the campus’ master plan, is considering a traffic engineer from Transportation Solutions, Inc. Interviews are scheduled for early November to find facilitators to engage conversations between the college, community and city officials, officials said, and a Dec. 9 meeting is scheduled to allow the facilitator and the Community Task Force to ensure the new consultant has scoped the project correctly.
“We feel that by engaging all these constituent groups around us and the traffic studies, we will come up with a good solution,” said the college’s vice president of administrative services, Beverly Brandt.
Community members said they are happy with the steps the college has taken to involve them in the master plan process and are excited to work with officials in the redesign of the intersection.
“They have listened to us and have wanted to keep in contact with us,” said Bob Barta, representative for the Highland Terrace Neighborhood Association. “And they’ve responded the best they could under the restrictions they had.”
He added, “As we get to work with one another and get to know one another, we are able to work things out in a way that doesn’t hurt the quality of life and safety of the citizens.”
Tim Williams of LMN Architects and project architect for the master plan said that he is confident in the way Shoreline Community College is addressing the public’s concerns.
“The college is to be commended for taking the lead and being proactive … they have made decisions that they feel are putting the community first, which is where they should be,” Williams said. “They’re stepping up to the plate and acknowledging that they are part of the solution to the problem with the intersection.”
The new design and approval of the intersection is scheduled to be finished by early spring, Brandt said.
“There is no rush for this,” Brandt said. “We want to do it right rather than do it fast.”
The college and LMN initially presented a proposal designed by a consultant from Traffic Engineering Northwest. After a community meeting July 29, it became clear that the proposed change to the intersection, intended to help mitigate traffic impacts of anticipated enrollment growth in coming years, was not popular among community members. The change to the intersection would have had traffic traveling west to Innis Arden Way from the intersection, accessing the college directly from Greenwood Avenue. Eastbound traffic would have been rerouted to 160th street west of Greenwood.
Shortly after the community meeting, college president Holly Moore asked LMN Architects that the original traffic engineer not be used in the future redesign of the intersection and that another consultant be brought in. The proposed change to the intersection also was dropped from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement portion of the master plan.
“The solution was totally unacceptable by the community,” Moore said in July.
The campus master plan outlines proposed changes to the college’s 78-acre campus that could be made to help compensate for the forecasted 19 percent growth in enrollment within the next 10 years. Those changes include adding a 700-car multi-level garage to reduce the amount of street parking within the neighborhoods surrounding the college, and adding to the campus an outdoor amphitheater, NCAA-sized baseball diamond, soccer field and improved water retention and detention systems.
The Draft Environmental Impact Statement portion of the master plan, including the redesign of the intersection, is required by the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges and by the city of Shoreline.
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